Share a view without giving access

Somebody in finance wants last month’s spend by team. They do not need an account, they should not see your routing config, and you do not want to export a CSV by hand every month.

Three mechanisms answer that, and they build on each other: a saved view is a query you can name and re-open, a share token turns one saved view into a public read-only link, and a schedule delivers the same view through the export pipeline on a cadence.

localhost:9090/ui/viewsDemo data

Save a view

A saved view is the current query as a durable artifact: the surface it targets, a time window, filter text, grouping, sort order and the columns you chose. Create one from the Saved views surface, or from the explorer once you have a query you want to keep.

Two things follow from a view being an artifact rather than a bookmark.

It is diffable. Two views can be compared, and a change to one is a change you can see rather than a URL that quietly means something else.

It can be promoted. Pin a view and it appears in your sidebar. Following the pinned entry applies the whole frozen query, not only its text filter, so the entry reproduces the slice it is named for.

The id must be a slug, and the surface picks it up from the name unless you set it yourself.

Mint a share token

A share token is a read-only bearer credential frozen to exactly one target. Use Share… on a view to mint one; the token is shown once and only its SHA-256 hash is kept.

The recipient opens /share/{token} and gets that query and nothing else. Not a stripped-down dashboard: there is no navigation at all, because the token grants one target rather than a narrower version of your instance.

Three properties worth knowing before you hand one out.

Revocation is immediate. Confirm the revoke and the link stops working on the next request. A revoked or expired token resolves to 404, which tells a recipient nothing about whether it ever existed.

It can expire on its own. Give a token a lifetime when the need has one. A quarterly review does not need a link that works forever.

Minting is admin work. The share:admin scope sits in the privileged set, alongside minting bearer tokens, because a share link is access.

For a tenant rather than a query, a governance share token freezes a node subtree instead: the recipient sees spend, limits, keys and refusals for their own subtree, and a read of a node above or beside it is refused rather than silently widened. Tenant self-service covers that shape.

Schedule a report

A schedule binds a saved view to a cadence and a delivery channel. It renders through the same exporter a manual export uses, so a delivered report carries the same provenance stamp: the pricing snapshot, the row counts, and the unpriced rows excluded and disclosed.

That last point is the reason to prefer a schedule over a hand-built pipeline. A CSV somebody assembles from the API loses the disclosure line, and a spend total without its exclusions is the figure most likely to be forwarded to somebody with a budget.

Save the view first. The surface says so rather than offering a schedule with nothing to render.

Or just export

For a one-off, every query surface has an export. An export is a read, so a viewer can do it without any of the above.

Unpriced rows export as UNPRICED (never a fabricated zero).

That line sits above the export control on the Cost surface, and it describes the file you get: an unpriced row appears in the export marked as unpriced rather than as 0. The same holds for the OTLP export, where an unpriced row carries a flag and carries no cost attribute at all, rather than a zero somebody’s dashboard would happily sum.

Cost exports covers the file formats and their columns.

Which mechanism to use

You want	Use
to come back to this query yourself	a saved view
the same slice in your sidebar	a pinned saved view
to send it to a colleague who has an account	the URL — filters live in the query string
to send it to somebody with no account	a share token
it to arrive every Monday	a schedule
a file, once	an export
a tenant to see their own spend and limits	a governance share token

What can go wrong

The share link works for longer than you meant. A token with no expiry has none. Revoke it when the need ends, or mint with a lifetime in the first place.

A recipient asks why they cannot navigate. That is the design: the token carries one frozen target. If they need to explore, they need an account with the viewer role.

A scheduled report stops arriving. Delivery failures are recorded and shown on the Alerts surface alongside rule state, because a schedule delivers through the same channels.

Someone rebuilds a total from an export and it disagrees with the screen. Check the disclosure line. A total over priced rows and a total over all rows are different figures, and the export says which one it is.